


A Heart's a Heavy Burden

by Andrew_Marie



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Axel & Roxas & Xion Friendship (Kingdom Hearts), Axel Is Lea (Kingdom Hearts), M/M, Magic, Magical Aging, Minor Aqua/Terra (Kingdom Hearts), Old Man Sora, Romance, Slow Burn, this pulls more from the book than the movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 03:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30032106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andrew_Marie/pseuds/Andrew_Marie
Summary: After the death of his mother, Sora is asked to stay and work in her flower shop while his brothers are sent away. His days are long and dull until the May Day celebrations where he gets whisked up into a magical drama himself, being saved by a princely wizard and cursed by the dreaded Wizard of the Wastes. When he sets off to find a way to break his curse, Sora finds himself climbing aboard the Wizard Riku’s moving castle and making a deal with his fire demon, Repliku.Howl's Moving Castle AU
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10
Collections: Soriku Big Bang 2020





	A Heart's a Heavy Burden

**Author's Note:**

> I am so happy to have been able to join the Soriku Big Bang 2020! I used to write more Kingdom Hearts fic way back when so I'm happy to have had the opportunity to participate and get back into it! This is part 1 of 2, so the second half of the story will be posted at a later date after it is finished and cleaned up. 
> 
> There is also art for this fic! You can find more from the amazing artists wearepopcandies and tiny_tealeaf on twitter!

There is a world filled with magic. Magic comes in many forms, from the kind that comes from heart to the kind that comes in envelopes full of powder. This world contains portals that take you from one side of the world to another and a castle that walks on two legs. This world contains kingdoms, with kings and royal wizards at the ready for war. This world also contains towns, like any other world.

In a shop in the little town named Traverse Town, there were 3 sons. It was well-known in this world that in families with 3 sons, the eldest son would inherit his father’s work, the middle would strike out within the town, and the youngest would be the most successful and the most likely to prosper with magic. This shop was the home of 3 sons: Sora, Ventus, and Roxas. Sora, the oldest, loved his brothers dearly, but knew he would stay at the flower shop his family ran while the other two went and made names for themselves outside of their family. Their family was a mishmash to begin with, with Sora having never met his father and being Ventus and Roxas’s half brother making Sora feel even more left out of their family. Their mother passed away and with money being tight from Sora’s step-father Cloud taking over the business and leaving his previous work, the decision was made for the boys to go off and fulfill what destiny they were believed to have.

Ventus was to stay within Traverse Town, being accepted as an apprentice at the big sweet shop and bakery in town, McDuck’s. The owner, Scrooge, had been a good friend of both Sora’s father and step-father and had helped the two of them get started on their own as well, so he was more than happy to take another from their family under his wing. Roxas was to go out to the Land of Departure, a settlement east of Traverse Town and home of a friend of their mother’s, a witch named Aqua. Aqua and her husband were more than happy to accept their friend’s son and teach him magic; a useful skill for a youngest son.

As the two brothers departed, one in each direction down the street, this left Sora and Cloud in front of Aerith’s Flowers, the best place in town to get flowers for any occasion. With the namesake gone, the two had a lot to do to get back to work.

Cloud did much of the background work of running a business, like balancing the money and working with suppliers. The shop had 3 other employees, a group of kids Sora and his brothers went to school with before school was optional and work was a priority for some families. They did much of the work in the front of the shop, with one focusing on helping people decide on custom arrangements and another being the most well-versed in quick-selling flowers, second only to Aerith. 

This left Sora with the behind the scenes work. He took care of the flowers as they were growing, picked them at their prime, and put together each bouquet that the store sold, custom or not. These days found Sora with dirt under his fingernails, something that he always saw on mother, and pollen up his nose. Cloud was proud to see Sora adapting as well as he did. Sora enjoyed the work too, enjoying working with his hands more than he did the bookwork at school.

However, it became clear to Sora a week into his new job that growing flowers in the courtyard between his family home and business and putting together bouquets in the back of the shop was not what Sora was cut out to do. The job left him isolated the majority of the day, only seeing his step-father when he walked past his office or one of the other three when someone would come pick up their order or they needed new flowers up front.

“I hate sitting in the back all day,” Sora complained one morning while he and Cloud ate breakfast before work.

“I don’t know what to tell you Sora. Business is doing as well as could be expected, having lost your mother with her flower magic means that some things just aren’t the same. You know how to do what she did, so I need you doing those jobs. I’ll see if I can help out some so you can help out in front later in the day,” Cloud stood from his seat and placed his dish in the sink to be washed later.

While Cloud did try to help Sora when he could, spring had come and the May Day festival was quickly approaching, taking up much of Cloud’s time getting schedules organized and suppliers met with. It left Sora to stay in that back room, with dirt under his fingers and the flowers his only friends.

With spring underway and more business coming into the shop every day, Sora was left with the flowers most days. He talked to the flowers while he put together each bouquet and arrangement. When a young man would order a bouquet for his wife as an apology for staying at the pub too late, Sora often talked about how these flowers would make for a good I’m Sorry gift.

“You’ll make that young lady very happy when she’s given you. She’ll definitely accept his apology with you in hand,” he’d say as he wrapped them in paper and twine.

Or when the girl who worked out front, Olette, would come in the back and ask for more lilies out front, he’d go in the back and pick them from the greenhouse in the courtyard and say to them, “You will make many people happy to have you in their house. A bright spot on their table or windowsill.”

As the days got busier and busier leading up to May Day and everyone coming together to work on the big flower arrangements they were expected to make for the festival, Sora realized how much he missed spending time with his brothers. Cloud and the workers at the shop were nice to talk to when they did talk to him, but he missed messing around with his brothers and playing games and telling stories with them. Knowing he would have May Day off for the festival, he made plans to go and visit Ventus in town.

* * *

May Day came with music and people overflowing the streets, with food and flowers coloring the streets. Everyone was wearing their best clothes for the season, ideal for dancing and partying all day long. Sora watched the well-dressed citizens pass by as he dressed for his own time out that day. Since Sora spent most of his days inside and out of the public view, many of his nicer clothes had fallen to the wayside. Some sat in disrepair from previous celebrations. Others stretched at the seams as Sora tried pulling them on. It seemed more time had passed than Sora realized, leaving him with most of the plain clothing he wore daily. He picked the nicest of the clothes, a green shirt rather than off-white or brown and brown pants, and left the house to join the masses in the streets.

“I used to hate being here by myself, I wonder when that changed,” Sora muttered to himself as he locked up the house and shop for the day. The street was louder now that he was outside, setting him on edge. 

“I used to like the crowds at the festivals too, when did that happen?” he pondered as he walked down the street, keeping closer to the walls of the buildings than he did when he would go with his brothers.

As Sora approached the intersection before the main plaza in town, his newfound discomfort increased tenfold as the crowd from the plaza spilled out onto the connecting roads.

“I could go around the plaza through that back alley and enter through the back door. That’s probably where Ventus is anyway, since he’s a baker apprentice and not a server girl,” he thought as he took a hard right and cut through the crowd approaching the plaza to the alley entrance across the way.

As he entered the alley, the sound of the festival became more droning as the walls muffled any distinct voices from the crowd. The alley was mostly empty, with only a few partygoers coming down from their own lofts above their businesses to join the main festivities.

Turning the corner led Sora to another busy street feeding to the plaza. “Shoot, forgot this road connected here,” he thought while dodging passerbys, “I need to get out more.”

The second alley jogged back and forth more as there was more variation in the buildings sizes. It wasn’t much of a problem for Sora to traverse the area, but it left him wondering where the intersection for the alley to the back of McDuck’s was.

Around another jog greeted Sora with two townsguard on their break. At least, that’s what he assumed as the two were chatting before he walked into one of their backs. As he stepped back, he saw the face of a pink haired man who frequented the shop for their roses and a blond woman he didn’t recognize over his shoulder.

“My my, looks like a little bug made its way back here,” the pink haired man said, twisting to face Sora.

“Leave the kid alone, we have better things to look for back here,” the woman said, her voice high.

“Come on, he could play with us. Not like we have anything to do while we hide from the crowd anyway. They’ll get drunk and cause a mess with or without us watching,” he countered, eyes flicking back to Sora when he stopped speaking.

“N-no thank you, I have somewhere I need to be going to,” Sora stuttered, moving to step past the man.

“Aah, come on. She may not want to play but I do,” he started and blocked Sora’s path.

“Alright Sora, you can stand your ground, it hasn’t been _that_ long since you had to stand up for yourself,” Sora thought, opening his mouth to interrupt the man when an arm draped over his shoulder, cutting him and the other man off before they could continue.

“So sorry I’m late, I missed the turn. Hope you didn’t wait too long for me,” the owner of the arm spoke, startling Sora and keeping him from looking up at them, instead looking down and away. The voice carried the note of someone who knew they were charming and used to getting what they wanted because of it. The townsguard stuttered before a movement out of the corner of Sora’s eye caused them to straighten their shoulders and begin marching past Sora and the mysterious man.

“Sorry about this, just walk with me for a moment, I’ll let you go when they’re off my tail,” the mysterious voice whispered as they started walking forward.

“Until who’s off your tail?” Sora asked, glancing up to look at the taller figure. The man’s profile showed a single sea green eye and long silver hair. His bangs cut in front of his eyes and the rest was pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a brightly colored cape that blurred together in Sora’s peripherals, but the entire look gave the man a princely quality to him. He looked like he could have just stepped out of a castle and didn’t belong in little Traverse Town for a May Day festival.

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll be involved then.”

“Alright then, but don’t think you can get off that easily, I’ll wanna know when I can,” Sora turned to look where they were going at the same time his shoe caught an uneven stone in the paving, causing him to stumble slightly.

“Well, now you’re involved,” the man sighed as a shlorping liquid sound followed them, with a new pop of the sound between every step. He turned them down the intersection of the alley, away from McDuck’s but into more of the alleyway system in this section of town.

With each step, the two sped up their walking until they were breaking out into a run, the princely man holding onto Sora’s arm the entire time, pulling him along with every turn as they dodged whatever was making the noise behind them. Ahead of them was the mouth of the alley and an empty sidestreet, but whatever was pursuing them began oozing from the walls. Puddles of inky oil-rainbow goo led to small black creatures making the noises. As soon as they were out of the puddle, the creatures would turn to start running at the two with an uneven gait.

“Hold on!” the man shouted over the commotion before the two of them burst into the air, floating high above the town and leaving the strange inky creatures on the ground.

“Alright, now straighten your legs and start walking,” the man said, holding both of Sora’s hands and taking small steps to encourage Sora to do the same.

“What is this?!” Sora shouted as he hesitantly stretched his legs out one at a time and followed what the man said.

“We’re flying, what does it look like?” the man’s voice betrayed the large grin he had on his face, but Sora was too shocked to think about looking over his shoulder, watching his feet with every step.

The two walked for a little bit before the man asked, “Where were you heading before I interrupted?”

“McDuck’s, I’m visiting my brother before joining the fun today,” Sora shared as he grew more confident walking on air. The man shifted their course so they could head to the large building that housed McDuck’s Bakery and Sweets. “What brings a wizard like you here?”

The man chuckled as they walked before responding, “What makes you think I’m a wizard?”

Sora gestured vaguely with his hands still in the other man’s as they approached the second floor of the building.

“I am what you think I am, be careful at the festival,” the man said as he dropped Sora off on the upper balcony of the building. He floated back a step before saying “Have fun,” and dropping straight down into the crowd below them.

Sora jumped to look over the balcony, looking to see if there was a dead man in front of the building, but the mass of people dancing and partying kept doing so and there were no screams of fright from a man falling from the sky. As Sora searched, he couldn’t find a figure with long silver hair either. 

“What a strange man. Maybe I’ll see him around again, he seems like the kind of guy to need a bouquet every once in a while,” Sora wondered as another voice shouted.

“Hey! What are you doing out here?!” a gruff voice hollered at Sora, causing him to look over quickly. He recognized the man as one of the staff at McDuck’s, probably a manager or some other kind of higher up.

“I got dropped off here trying to visit my brother! He’s learning how to be a baker!” Sora shouted back as he moved towards him and the door and away from the loud festival.

“You’re Ven’s brother? Come in then, I’ll go grab him for you,” the man said as he held the door open for Sora before hurrying off down the hallway of the built-in dorms for the employees.

Sora walked up and down the hall, looking into any cracked doors and open rooms to see what it might be like living at the bakery. Even from up the stairs and who knows how many corridors between him and the shop proper, the shouts of customers trying to get the girls’ attention and place their orders could be heard noisily. Sora was just resettling to look out the window back to the balcony when loud steps could be heard running towards him.

“Sora! How the hell did you get up here? They said you and some guy flew up here? What was that?” Ven spoke quickly, his worry bleeding into his words and movements as he gestured while he spoke. It was a habit Ven picked up from Roxas and Sora whenever he spent long periods of time with them. Must have someone else here who speaks like they do.

Sora laughed self-consciously, “I can’t really explain what happened, I just kinda got wrapped up in what happened.”

“Come down with me then, I’ll give you something and you can tell me about it. Sounds much more interesting than what I’m doing today,” Ven started walking away, leading the way to where the ovens were kept in the building, dodging any customers. “They seem to like me whenever I bring anything out, the customers go wild. Scrooge thinks he would make more money with me working as one of the server girls but the bakers don’t want to lose me either,” he chuckled as he snatched two fruit danishes.

“Sounds like you’re having a good time here.”

“It’s pretty fun. Like being in the dorms at school, especially since I am living in a dorm again. It’s just a different atmosphere than the school since this is work and that was school,” he shrugged, biting into the pastry, “What about you? How’s Dad treating you?”

“Cloud’s working me hard, he knows I’m good with the flowers like Mom was, so I’ve always got something to do. I’m helping out with the bouquet assemblies, so I don’t have a lot of time to do other stuff,” Sora bit into his own danish, the strawberry jam sweet and tasty.

“Sora, you have to get out more! You’re more than just some guy that sits in the back room all day. I know you want to do more than work with flowers all day long, Mom wouldn’t want you doing that either,” Ven tossed his danish into his lap with his over-animated gestures. “That’s why we were all going to school rather than believing that you _have_ to work at the shop. It might be our family’s shop but that doesn’t mean it has to stay ours for the rest of time.”

Sora sighed, his mood falling as he heard Ven rant on. “It’s not like I can do anything about it, Cloud needs the help. The shop is busy all the time and he doesn’t have the time to do all the other stuff owning a business entails.”

Ven threw his hands in the air, “Mom did most of that and had the other kids help her out when she needed it! Why can’t Dad do that?”

“Are you forgetting she could do magic with flowers? It didn’t take long for her to take care of the flowers in the morning because she barely had to do anything to get nice flowers. Everyone else will take a while to get anything as nice as she could, which is why Cloud has me working on flowers.”

“Alright. Alright, keep working there if you feel that way. But promise me,” he reached out and grabbed Sora’s free hand, pulling his attention to him, “just promise me that you’ll get out more. Come visit me more often. Come hang out with me and my friends here. You’re more than some guy in the back of the shop, so get out more. Even if you don’t hang out with us, just come pick something up and say hi. Get out of the house and shop. Please.”

“Alright, I promise,” Sora said, twisting his hand in Ven’s to wrap his pinky around Ven’s.

“Okay. Now finish your danish, I have more stuff I want to tell you about and show you while you’re here,” Ven smiled, picking up his pastry to finish it.

After an hour of wild stories of what happens in the dorms and which boys were interested in which girls, Ventus was called back into work. He didn’t have the day off after all and had taken his lunch and a small amount of personal time they allowed him due to Sora’s peculiar arrival. He waved and hollered at Sora as he was leaving to visit more often while the gruff voice from earlier was yelling at him as well.

With his visit to McDucks and Ven completed, Sora realized he was exhausted from the adventure and more excitement than he’s seen in the months since his mother’s funeral. He chose to skip out on the festivities and make his way back to the shop, taking the longest and most winding path he could to avoid any other social interactions.

By the time he reached the shop, the light of day was completely gone and night had settled in. In the distance, he could hear some of the festivities continuing within the town. He moved to unlock and enter the shop, locking the door behind himself as he walked to the front counter to double check that everything was where it should be, especially since Cloud was so busy today and had been out of the house before Sora was even awake to take care of the flowers this morning. 

While he was looking under the counter to make sure none of the inventory papers and receipts had been moved, he heard the click of the door and the ringing of the bell at the top of the door. He stood up straight, hoping to see Cloud enter the room but instead seeing a man with skin as tan as his own and silver hair. If he only saw him from the corner of his eye, he may have even mistaken him as the strange man from earlier in the day, but instead this man had an ominous and threatening air about him.

“The shop is closed, sir,” Sora stated, standing his ground. “I could have sworn I locked that door, guess I forgot,” he muttered to himself while making sure to not break eye contact with the man.

“Now now, young man, I’m just here to see what lovely flowers this shop has, especially seeing that some of the arrangements were particularly pleasing. They radiated ‘celebrate and be merry when you see me.’ I wanted to see if there were any other charmed flowers here.”

“Charmed flowers? Sir, there haven’t been any charmed flowers here for months and even when there were, it was to keep them fresh for longer. Nothing that makes people feel things,” Sora shifted as the man entered the room. When he looked to the door, he saw tall figures just outside the door that seemed to absorb any light that came out of the room.

“Come on, you really think you can convince me of that? Look, here are some bouquets saying ‘congratulations’ and some saying ‘I love you.’ There’s even one here that thinks it can convince me to accept the apology going along with it.” 

Sora remembered the day before when he tied the ribbon around the vase and said that the flowers were perfect to apologise with; that anyone receiving them would certainly accept the apology the giver gave. He did his best not to show the memory on his face when the man turned back to him.

“You’re a smart young man, but we can’t be having anyone here believing just anything someone charms a bouquet with. It makes my work that much harder. I don’t think you should be allowed to work here anymore, especially not with that kind of ability,” the man raised his hand and lowered it with the palm out, making Sora feel stuck in his place.

“What have you done?” Sora pleaded, his voice turning gravelly as he spoke.

“Just taking care of a problem. No one would believe that I’m a perfectly trustworthy guy if someone could say I cursed them for having charmed flowers. Good luck with that,” the man turned away at that point, walking to the door before being enveloped in an inky blackness like the creatures from earlier in the day.

“The Wizard from the Wastes….” Sora muttered at the empty room, feeling himself freed from whatever held him in place. The moment it released him, he felt his entire body creak into a crouch, all of his joints achy and sore like when he was sick in bed for several days in a row. He raised his hands and saw the skin on top looked papery and thin and the palms of his hands looked tough and leathery, wrinkles and liver spots covering them. Panicking, he moved as quickly as he could to the back room where a mirror hung for people who ordered flower crowns for events to look at themselves.

In the mirror, Sora saw himself aged 80 years. His hair had become a coarse grey and his eyes had a permanently veiny and bloodshot quality to them. His face sagged and paled, freckles blending into liver spots at the edge of his face. His skin on his arms sagged down and his back bent into a curve, leaving him standing almost a full head shorter if he didn’t try stretching his back out.

The image left Sora in a tizzy. He began pacing back and forth before frantically moving to the front door and locking it, extinguishing all the lights and hurrying through the courtyard and up the stairs into the empty house. He moved quickly into his room and locked the door.

“It’ll be alright, it’s just a bad dream. You got home earlier and this never happened. This isn't real. Just go to sleep and it will be alright,” Sora spoke to himself as he moved about the dark room, committing to himself that he should just go to sleep. So he slept.

* * *

Sora woke to the sky lightening with the sunrise outside the window in his room. Remembering the chaos of the night before, he startled in his bed and moved to see if it was all a dream. When his back and hips protested with the quick move, he raised his hand to his face and saw the wrinkled and spotted hand from the night before.

“Well, now what. I can’t let Cloud see me like this…” Sora muttered to himself as he slowly sat up, thinking out loud. “If I stay here, Cloud will have to see me like this at some point. I can’t hide in this room forever.” Sora puttered around the room for a moment, looking through his wardrobe and walking over to the mirror in the room, “Ven did say I should get out more. Might as well spend what time I have with this curse exploring the world.”

With his decision made, Sora began going through his things, finding what could fit in a rucksack that he could comfortably carry with him when he heard a knock on his door.

“Sora? The sun’s up, you coming?” Cloud’s voice was muffled through the door, but the concern was still clear.

“I caught a bad cold yesterday, I’m going to stay in bed all day! Go on without me today,” Sora spoke loudly, hoping his new gravelly voice would cooperate with him.

Cloud stood at the door for a moment before speaking again, “You sound like you’re about to keel over from old age, are you sure you’ll be alright?”

Sora looked up, begging internally that Cloud would give up soon. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. If I need anything, I’ll just come down and get you!”

“I’ll hold you to that. Make sure you eat and drink something so you can get your strength back,” Cloud spoke as he walked away.

Sora stayed where he was until he could no longer hear Cloud’s footsteps and the door to the courtyard slammed loud enough that Sora was confident a gust of wind pulled it closed behind the quiet man. When he was certain Cloud was in the shop, Sora began moving about again, grabbing a change of undergarments and a spare shirt and stuffing them in his bag before leaving his room and grabbing a glass bottle of water, and a chunk of bread and cheese from in the kitchen. 

As he turned to head down the hall to the back door that will let him out into the alleyway rather than the courtyard, his joints popped and cracked the loudest they have since he was cursed to be an old man. “Ooooh, being old is worse than I thought,” he mumbled as he slowly went down the stairs and left his home.

The streets were calmer than the day before, with the majority of people out on them being people who were cleaning up the remnants of the previous day’s festivities. No one paid any mind to Sora as he walked through the town, following the roads he grew up on towards the river that separated Traverse Town from the farmlands outside of the Wastes.

The Wastes were often described as a terribly empty and desolate place, with desert as far as the eye could see on the other side of the mountain range bordering the outlying farmland. Most who went out there never came back. The people of Traverse Town whispered about it being either the Wizard of the Wastes, a phantom from years past that controlled half of a supposed war that occurred there, or the Wizard Riku luring the young men and women out to explore the world and eating their hearts. Whichever it was, Sora was hoping to avoid them as he planned to skirt along through the farmlands until he reached the next town and go from there.

He approached the bridge crossing the river and came across a middle-aged man whose appearance and clothing gave away his life as a farmer. “I would’ve called that man old yesterday, what a change in perspective,” Sora thought as he approached the man and his stopped cart. “Young man, are you heading out into the farms? I’m heading out that way to meet with my brother but I would appreciate a ride if you could spare one.”

The man startled out of his far-away gaze when Sora spoke to him, his pale blue eyes looking him over. “Yeah, I can give you a ride, but I’m on the edge of the Wastes, so be mindful of that,” he gestured to the back of the cart. Sora nodded and watched as the man began moving to get his oxen back in order to continue towing the cart and its new cargo along before hopping onto the back of the cart. The motion jostled his joints, popping noisily.

The ride itself wasn’t that bad and was as comfortable as any ride on a cart filled with hay would be. When they reached the man’s farm, Sora slid off the back and began moving to continue his journey as soon as possible. He barely heard the man yelling at him as he determinedly walked towards the Wastes to distance himself from running into anyone before he was ready to. He waved over his shoulder but continued walking, hoping the man didn’t find him too terribly rude.

When the sun reached its height, Sora stopped to eat from his bread and cheese and drink from his bottle. His stomach rumbled as he moved to sit on a flatter rock poking out of the ground where he walked, hoping that it wouldn’t be too terrible to get up from when he finished.

“I haven’t even been this way for a day and I want this to be over. I’m barely even out of town and it’s already midday!” he chewed on his bread before chuckling quietly to himself, “At least I still have all of my teeth,” He grinned as he finished eating his lunch.

As Sora hiked his rucksack back onto his back, his joints creaking from sitting on such a stiff surface, he heard a rustling coming from a bush a ways away from him. 

“Must be a rabbit over there. Or maybe a fox!” Sora thought, the idea of maybe seeing some wildlife on his trip never occurring to him until this moment. “Well, I better not cause a problem for them, Mother always said not to disturb the wild animals if we came across any.”

When Sora turned to begin his trek again, the rustling became frantic and a loud whining joined the noise, drawing Sora’s attention to it again. He approached the bush apprehensively, trying to see more of whatever was making the noise. In the bush, a medium-sized black dog was caught in the branches of the bush.

Sora tried to drop to his knees but he felt his back and thighs protest at the movement, slowing himself down to get on the dog’s level. “It’s okay buddy, I’m here to help,” he fruitlessly tried soothing the dog.

As he reached his arm in to push the branches aside to help free the dog, the whining turned to growling at the presence, the dog feeling threatened. “It’s alright, don’t bite. Just don’t bite me and we’ll be okay, buddy,” Sora spoke, mostly to himself as he grabbed one of the branches holding the dog in place and pushing it aside, giving the dog enough wiggle room to get out. As the dog backed up and Sora sat up, he saw the dog had white along its nose and chest. It looked like one of the dogs the sheepherders use to herd their sheep. Almost as quickly as he saw the dog’s appearance, the dog was sprinting away, faster than any dog Sora had ever seen before.

“This would be so much easier if I could move that fast,” Sora grumbled as he worked his way back to a standing position. If his back and knees protested the movement to kneel down, they protested standing even more. 

Eventually, he did manage to get back up, but the ordeal took much longer than Sora liked. “Maybe I should look for a walking stick to help me get up if I sit down again.”

He began hiking again, the path becoming rockier as he got closer to the mountains in the distance. There were still bushes around, but they were becoming more sparse as he kept going.

“I guess I wouldn’t be able to find a stick big enough out here, anyway. There’s no trees around to have sticks big enough,” Sora groaned to himself, beginning to climb a smaller hill on the main hill he was climbing.

As the sun reached closer to mid-afternoon, Sora was beginning to feel distraught over the lack of anything to help this trip be easier on him. His knees creaked with each step. His pace slowed the longer the trip took. The crest he wanted to be walking along by this time looming out of reach still. The journey was seeming more and more impossible the longer he walked.

As he crested the top of the hill, he spotted a branch sticking out of a bush in the distance.

“My savior!” Sora shouted as he hastily hobbled towards it. His chest heaved with each breath he took, the branch looking more and more appealing the closer he got to it.

Sora reached the bush after dodging several protruding rocks that could easily take an ankle out if one stepped on them wrong and began eyeing up the long branch. It looked to be slightly longer than he originally thought it was, reaching closer to his mid-chest rather than his waist. “Well, maybe I’ll just look like one of the old wizards from the picture books Mom used to read us, with a staff reaching up,” he chuckled as he began pulling on the stick.

He tugged and tugged but the stick wouldn’t come loose. He pulled back with all the strength he had, but it wouldn’t budge from its spot. “Come on, you stupid stick,” he huffed, “I know you can’t be held on that strongly.” He shifted to where he could push down on the stick like a lever, hoping to unlodge it from whatever it was caught on.

When he pushed down, the stick moved with him bit by bit until one final push sent the end of the stick into the ground and a figure emerged from the bush.

“A scarecrow? What’s it doing all the way out here?” Sora wondered aloud as he took a better look at the now revealed scarecrow. It wore tattered long clothes and looked like it had been given the dress of one of the wives of the farmers nearby. The dress looked as though it was only brown from dirt though, and had probably once been a fairly nice dress that had definitely seen better days. Higher, where the head of a scarecrow would normally sit, was a large and slightly rotted piece of fruit. “Is that a paopu fruit? I never really liked paopus, always had a bitter aftertaste to them.” He shoved down on the scarecrow, forcing the stick into the ground and letting the scarecrow stand on its own, the sleeves of its dress fluttering in the wind. “I can’t use you as a cane or walking stick, you’re too big. Well, so long.” Sora left the scarecrow where it was, continuing to walk away and starting the climb up the final hill before would begin on his true adventure.

About halfway up the hill, Sora found a loose stick next to the road, similar to what one would use after the kindling in a fire, that was just the right size to be used as a cane. 

With the help of the walking stick, Sora was able to reach the top of the hill in record time, but the sun had begun to set and the chill of the night during spring began settling in almost immediately. “I’ve never been camping before, but it’s so cold out, I wonder how much good it would have done to prepare more. I never used to get this cold so easily, being old is terrible,” he grumbled to himself as he looked back and forth for which direction he wanted to head in and begin seeing more of the world. To the east was the Land of Departure and to the west was the Wastes, so he decided heading towards civilization and other people may be the better bet. And anyway, he could check in and see how Roxas was doing while he was at it. With his decision made, he turned towards the east and began walking.

However, after about 7 steps, Sora felt a rumbling coming from the ground below him. He stopped in place, waiting to see what would happen next. After a beat, another rumble, then another, then another, each one stronger than the last. As he felt the 5th rumble, he heard a creaking and grumbling noise behind him and turned to see the moving castle that roamed the hills outside of Traverse Town.

The castle was huge, larger than the largest building in Traverse Town (McDuck’s) and looked like it was built out of wooden shacks on top of wooden shacks. At the very top of it, it looked like there were trees coming out of it, but they looked nothing like any trees Sora had seen before. There was obvious machinery that helped the castle move more efficiently, but Sora and everyone in town knew it was Wizard Riku’s castle, so there was definitely a fair bit of magic keeping the whole thing together and wandering as it did. Overall, Sora in his new feeble body, felt incredibly dwarfed and overcome by the castle.

When the castle was about 30ft from Sora and it’s shadow from the last of the day’s sun completely engulfed him, the castle stopped. It picked its feet up a couple of times before appearing to crouch down, looking like it was almost settling in for the night. Sora picked up his nerve and stepped closwer to the castle. When it didn’t move, he stood up straighter and began investigating.

“I wonder how many people have gotten to see the castle this close up. It looks so much shabbier up close,” he mumbled to himself, rounding around the castle to the back. On the backside of the castle was a piece that hung lower than the rest and held a single wooden door. As the last of the daylight disappeared beneath the land and the world was overcome with the darkness of night, Sora stepped up to the door and pushed on the handle, finding an open door. Looking between the wilderness behind him and the dimly lit room in front of him, he made his choice and stepped fully into the castle.

The door catches the wind behind Sora, closing the door more forcefully than necessary. The room is dark above the stairs in front of him, with a flickering light and the quiet crackling of a fire the only sign of someone having been there recently. In front of the fire sits a single wooden chair, glowing faintly from the fire light. After the trek that day, Sora had never been more elated to see a wooden chair. He gives the fire two more logs before he sets himself on the chair, ready to rest after such a full day.

As his eyes drift closed, the fire begins crackling louder, the color of the fire looking more purple and green, like there was salt in the wood he tossed on it. After a moment, the crackling turns into something more clear, a gravelly voice. “Man, that is one nasty curse.”

His eyes snap back open, looking at the fire. There are streaks of red throughout it, but the majority of the fire is purple and appears to have a face, with green spots where there would be eyes and a blue horizontal streak where there would be a mouth. Shocked, Sora questions, “You can talk?”

The fire’s eyes appear to crinkle before the blue streak opens as he talks, “Of course. I’m Repliku, a super powerful fire demon. But I bet you can’t talk, can you?”

Sora’s brows furrow before the implication connects in his mind, “Well, you already know about my curse it seems, so I guess I can talk about it, even vaguely,” he shrugged lightly, his shoulder popping quietly.

“Anyone could tell you’re cursed,” Repliku smirked. “Could smell it on you the moment you walked in.”

“The curse makes me smell bad?” Sora’s eyes widened again, lifting his elbow up so he could smell under his arm before glancing to see where Repliku’s nose would be on his fiery face.

“That’s not the point. The point is I bet you _don’t_ want to be cursed anymore. At least, I would assume that’s why you’ve come here.”

“It’s true that I don’t want to be cursed, but what’s in it for you? I know a fire demon wouldn’t do something like that out of the goodness of their heart,” Sora crossed his arms and relaxed back into the chair more, the exhaustion from the day catching up to him.

“I want out of my contract. He makes me do all of the work in the castle! ‘Take the castle over here Repliku’ and ‘Heat some water for my bath Repliku.’ I want out of it! You break me out of my contract with Riku, I’ll lift your curse,” Repliku answered, hope radiating off of him.

Sora’s eyes began drifting closed again, sleep grabbing him, “A contract with Wizard Riku? Alright, it’s a deal,” he mumbles as he drifts off and begins snoring.

Repliku grins before trying to get Sora’s attention again, waving purple arms with red streaks around and shouting, “Hey! Old guy! Hey! Dammit…” before giving up and resting in the wood for the evening.

* * *

It was a loud knocking on the door that woke Sora that morning. The crick in his neck and jab along his back reminded him he had slept in a chair and flashes of the night came rushing back to him. Had he really talked with a fire demon? Had he made a _deal_ with that fire demon? He raised his head with a crack and glanced around the room. With the light of day, he could see the large amount of cobwebs in the rafters above his head and as he looked forward, the fireplace in front of him still had the fire that looked like it was burning wood from the ocean but was also filled with ash.

The knocking continued and a loud banging came from above Sora. He went ahead and dropped his head back to pretend like he was sleeping as the banging descended down a set of stairs that Sora hadn’t seen and rushed by, mumbling something as the figure passed by. When he heard them descending the stairs to the door, Sora raised his head again and took a look at the figure. They were tall, taller than Cloud and most of his friends, with bright red hair. Sora wondered for a moment if it was his natural hair or if it came from some sort of charm.

As one last round of knocking sounded, Sora wondered who would be knocking on the castle door. Maybe someone was trying to come down the mountain it had stopped on and the castle was blocking the way. However, that thought was completely dashed when there was a quiet whirring sound and the door opened to a scene of a street in a city or town Sora had never seen before. Whatever the figure that came from upstairs and the man at the door were talking about went through one ear and out the other as Sora moved to stand and try to see more of what was behind the man at the door. The two stopped talking at some point and the figure closed the door, blocking Sora’s view of the street outside.

“How’d you get in here, grandpa?” the figure spoke, their tenor voice and narrow eyes filled with disdain at Sora’s presence in the castle.

“I came in through the doo-” Sora started.

“I let him in,” the gravelly voice from the night before spoke up, Repliku forming more solidly in the firepit.

“You _let him in?_ ” the person fisted the hair on top of their head for a moment before smoothing their hair back down and turning to Sora. “The door is supposed” they glance back at Repliku as they say ‘supposed’, “to be hidden so that strangers don’t just wander in from the Wastes. So, grandpa, how’d you get in here?”

“I just came in through the door. I saw it and tried opening it and it let me in, so here I am,” Sora shrugged.

“Really. Well, good luck, I doubt Riku will want to take on another apprentice, I was already enough of a pain for him.”

“So this _is_ Wizard Riku’s castle. Incredible that a wizard so well known would have such a nasty house,” Sora mumbled to himself before being interrupted by more knocking. This time, the knocking is just loud enough to be heard by Sora, dramatically different from the earlier knocking.

“Stay right where you are,” the figure said, their footsteps heavy on the stone steps as they went to answer the door.

“Twilight Town,” Repliku shouted from behind Sora. 

As the figure reached the door, the whirring sound started again, drawing Sora’s eyes more solidly to the door as it opened once again to a scene Sora had never seen before. Whereas before the street was busy with people traversing the streets and the sound of hooves interspersed, this street was loud. Trolleys and carriages passed in the street behind whoever the figure was talking to, with shouts and the sounds of people drowned out from the sounds of traffic. Just as before, when Sora had just started to get a good look out the door, the figure shut it, turning back to him once again and watching him with his hands on his hips this time.

“Alright grandpa. I’m starving so I’m gonna have some breakfast. There should be some left over if you want any,” he said as he climbed the stairs, dropping a pair of envelopes on a table under the window before he maneuvered his way to an area next to Repliku’s fire pit. Sora could see a mix of food and junk on the counter the figure was digging through. He pulled a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese out of one of the drawers but Sora spotted what appeared to be some cured meat sticking out of a basket among the junk.

“Why not brown up the meat there?” Sora asked, moving to look next to where the figure was looking for a knife. He found eggs within the basket as well when he got closer. The food in the basket looked like it was from a market from the day before. “You have such good food here, why not eat any of it?”

“Because Riku is the only one who can cook with Repliku,” the figure shrugged.

“Oh come now, at the end of the day he’s still just fire,” Sora reached up above the counter, grabbing a pan and the basket before taking the items over to the fire pit.

“I am more than just a fire, I’m a fire _demon_. Huge difference. You aren’t cooking breakfast on me, old man,” Repliku rebutted as Sora came around.

“Sure, fire demon. Repliku, you can make us breakfast, can’t you? It’s not such a big deal that such a powerful demon can’t even heat a pan for a little old man like me to be able to have some better food than just bread, right?” Sora ensured he had the puppy dog eyes that always got his mom and Cloud to let him take an extra piece of dessert.

“You can eat some of that cheese Lea got out too,” Repliku replied, sticking out his fiery tongue at Sora.

Sora glanced over at the figure, spotting him chewing on a piece of the chunk of cheese he had gotten out earlier. He concluded that the figure must be Lea since there was no one else in the castle to his knowledge before he turned his gaze back to Repliku and picked up the pan again, shoving it at Repliku. “It wasn’t really a choice that you had, you see,” Sora manhandled the pan, fighting against Repliku until, with a shout, Repliku went down and simmered underneath the pan, the green spots of his eyes glaring at Sora as the appear in front of him.

Lea stands silent as Sora places two pieces of the cured bacon into the pan, already sizzling from Repliku’s heat. “You really got Repliku to bow down to cook with him…” he muttered, amazed as he continued to watch Sora.

Repliku muttered curses at Sora underneath the sounds of the bacon sizzling as the whirring next to the door started before another figure walked in. Before Sora could look, Lea spoke over him, “Master Riku! Welcome back.”

Sora looked over to find the man who had helped him at the May Day festival coming up the stairs of the castle. The man wore the same brightly patterned coat as the day before but it appeared disheveled. In fact, the man’s entire appearance was far more disheveled than it had been at any point the day prior. His hair looked like it had grown an inch overnight, further obscuring his eyes and the hair that was pulled back now hung long around his shoulders. If Sora squinted, he could see the man’s eyes were red-rimmed and tired, but he kept a friendly, if tired, aura around him as he reached the top of the stairs.

“Now who might you be?” the man, Wizard Riku Sora’s brain provided, asked, his face taking a curious look to it.

“Ah, I’m grandpa Sora. I’m a cleaning service that Repliku hired, he’s tired of how dirty it is in the castle,” Sora answered as pleasantly as he could.

Riku walked over to him and Repliku, the curious look growing more and more intrigued the closer he got. “Well Repliku, I never thought you’d put out an ad for a cleaning service. I also never thought you’d listen to someone besides me. What a momentous day this is for us,” he grinned before taking the pan from Sora, lightly pushing him out of the way as he took over cooking.

“Well Sora, hand me another slice of that bacon and 6 eggs,” Riku directed, motioning with the hand closer to Lea to grab something. Lea returned with a spatula before he was motioned off again by Riku while Sora held out the bacon he was asked for.

Sora stood near Riku while he cooked, watching as he fed Repliku the egg shells. He was still astonished that he truly was in Wizard Riku’s castle and he was standing next to him as he cooked breakfast for himself, his apprentice, and Sora, a cursed man. What his life had become in less than 2 days he could barely believe besides the fact that he was there living it.

Sora’s thinking took up more time than he thought because before too long, Lea beckoned him over to the table in the center of the room. It was covered in junk, from books and papers to scrap metal and what he assumed were spell components, but Lea had pushed aside most of it to clear enough space for the three of them to sit at one end of it. 

As he sat down, Lea held out a fork and two spoons, all of them dirty. “Take your pick,” he said, eying the pile of dishes in the sink in what must be a more standard kitchenette next to where he had fished the food out from earlier. Sora thought as he picked the cleanest spoon of the bunch that he had way more work on his plate than he initially thought when he told the lie about providing a cleaning service. He wiped the spoon off as Riku scooped two eggs and a slice of bacon onto the plate in front of him.

“Well everyone, enjoy,” Riku stated as he sat at the table. The aura around him never wavered but when Sora made eye contact with him, he saw his eyes had a glassy look to them. Not quite like he was on the brink of tears but like there was a barrier between whatever emotion would show in his eyes with whatever his face showed. Sora wondered what could make someone like that as he went to take his first bite of food.

“So Sora, what is that in your pocket?” Riku asked as he suddenly looked back up, his food untouched.

“In my pocket?” Sora reached into his pocket to find a piece of paper that had not been there before. He looked at it for a moment before passing it to Riku’s outstretched hand.

The paper sizzles as it touches Riku’s hand, fizzling as it falls to the table, leaving a scorch mark on the table. The mark was shaped like a heart with an elongated bottom with an x with thorns within the center of the heart.

“What does it mean, Riku?” Lea asks, leaning over the table to better look at the mark. 

“It’s just a signature, nothing more. A wizard signing off on the work they’ve done,” Riku placed his hand over the mark, a glow emitting from under his hand. “Now Sora, what business did you have with this wizard who has so kindly signed my table now?”

“That wiz-” As Sora began to try to respond, his mouth was forcibly shut by a magical force. 

Across from him, Riku made a small nod before he rose and dumped his breakfast into Repliku’s open maw. “Well, I will need some hot water for my bath this morning, I will speak to you all later.” As quickly as came, he was gone again, up the stairs and stomping around as he went.

Almost as soon as Riku was going up the stairs, Sora’s mouth was finally released from it’s magical grasp. “That stupid wizard!” he shouted as he slammed his hands down on the table before shoveling the rest of his food into his mouth, visibly irate. He deflated the more he ate but the frustration sat with him for the rest of the day.

* * *

Sora’s first day mostly involved watching as Lea wandered around the main room and dealing with the inner workings of the magic businesses Riku seemed to have established across the land. About an hour after Riku whisked himself away to the bathroom, he once again whisked himself away and out of the house, waving generally as he walked past in a flurry of a waving coat behind him. When Lea wasn’t looking, Sora would do small tidying things, following through with what he told Riku when he asked about him on his arrival but not enough to draw too much attention to himself on this day.

No, it wasn’t until the next day, when Sora woke the earliest he ever had before. Outside the castle, the sky was still almost totally dark, with only the horizon becoming ever so slightly lighter and giving away that morning was on its way. He woke and readied himself for the day, starting by cleaning as much of the little kitchen he could see. He realized he had taken on a much larger task than he originally thought as every new cranny he uncovered appeared dirtier than the last. As the sun breached into the castle and lit the room brighter, Sora turned to survey the rest of the room and found a groggy Lea sitting at the same spot he had the day before at breakfast, chewing on the remaining heel from yesterday’s bread.

“Young man, you better grab anything you don’t want thrown away from down here,” Sora threatened, pushing his sleeves back up his arms. Lea’s eyes widened as he processed both the cleaning mess behind Sora and the threat that had just been given to him. He stuffed the last of the bread into his mouth before grabbing a handful of papers from the table and running upstairs, the slam of his door rattling the crossbeams of the ceiling.

Sora chuckled to himself before he pulled down a broom and began making work of the room.

It wasn’t again until around noon when the door opened to the castle and a slightly disheveled Riku walked into the room to find what tornado had struck the castle. 

“He’s gone mad!” Repliku coughed from the fireplace as Sora began gathering all of the ash from the hearth onto a sheet. 

Sora turned to look at who Repliku was talking to and locked eyes with Riku on the stairwell, taking note of how his bangs had been nicely cut when he left but had fallen back into his eyes while he had been gone. “I haven’t really gone mad, just got to work is all,” Sora shrugged before turning back to the hearth and shoveling more of the ash.

The castle was quiet that day besides the occasional sound coming from Lea upstairs, so Sora was able to hear when Riku’s steps came up beside him and he picked up tongs to deal with burning firewood and lifted Repliku from the hearth. “Move quickly then, Sora, or else we’ll have a bigger problem than me holding a fire over your head,” he murmured.

Taking the hint, Sora got to work and cleaned the hearth out as quickly as he could. Riku replaced Repliku and started to head upstairs and leave Sora to do what he was doing before turning back around and facing Sora as he grabbed the cloth he was shoveling the ash onto, “And by the way, leave the bugs alone. They are welcome guests in this house.”

“They’re bugs is what they are,” Sora huffed as he lifted the mess.

“If you absolutely must kick them out, keep them alive then,” Riku moved up the stairs, only reappearing an hour later and leaving quietly out the castle door. A little while later, Lea also left, but Sora had become engrossed in his cleaning, not noticing that he was alone.

By evening, Sora had cleaned all of the living space, the floor shining nicely in the setting sunlight as he sat with Repliku and ate bread from a stale hidden loaf with cheese, the two quiet until Sora readied himself for bed.

The next morning, Sora continued his cleaning. Sometime during the night, Lea had come back and locked the door to his room. That didn’t stop Sora, who got to work cleaning up the stairs and started in on the grossest room he had ever seen: the bathroom.

Any bathroom would get grimy and scummy as time went on, but the addition of charms and magicks covered the room in bright, colorful, and smelly grime and scum. After a deep breath, Sora steeled himself and began cleaning once again.

When he emerged from the bathroom, a voice was heard yelling up the stairs, “Old man! You can clean my room but don’t touch anything on top of my bed!” Sora grinned at Lea’s voice and the permission into his room, taking his time to make sure things were neat and tidy in the meantime.

All the cleaning gave Sora time to think about his situation and where he was finding himself the past two days. As he folded a final pair of stray pants to put into Lea’s dresser, he sighed to himself. While he made the deal with Repliku, he knew there was always a chance that he would be stuck as an old man until the day he died. No youth to continue living out, no chance of doing what he genuinely wished to do, and no chance of proving the legends about sons wrong. He would most likely be kicked out of Wizard Riku’s castle before long and would be back at square one. 

Ever positive though, Sora shrugged and closed the door to Lea’s room, deciding that it could always be much worse than where he was now. He had a roof over his head, food to eat, company to talk to when he felt like it, and a challenge ahead of him as long as he stayed in the castle. He couldn’t really ask for more, he thought as he turned to work on Riku’s room.

Surprising him though, Riku stood in the doorway of his room, blocking Sora from entering. “You aren’t coming in here and disturbing my spiders. I told you they were welcome guests and yet here we are, a castle with considerably fewer spiders.”

“I did keep them alive when I moved them outside,” Sora mumbled as Riku continued on.

“I’ve also heard from Repliku that you’ve been unbearable downstairs.”

“I have done no such thing. I did what I said I would and I cleaned downstairs and now I am cleaning upstairs. I’d do the whole thing if you weren’t blocking your door too!”

“He said you were up before the sun rose, making a racket as you were cleaning all day long. He said you chased Lea out too,” Riku smirked slightly, not that Sora noticed as he became more and more flustered at the interaction.

“I only told Lea to get what he didn’t want thrown out out of the way. He left on his own yesterday, he didn’t say anything to me as he left,” Sora defended, his face reddening the more he spoke.

“Doesn’t change the fact I won’t let you into this room,” Riku shut the door, ending their conversation.

Sora sputtered in the doorway before further shouting was heard downstairs, “Come eat, old man!” Sora fumed for a moment more in front of Riku’s door before turning and leaving, his cleaning rampage completed for the day.

The following day began as any other day could have. Sora awoke and found new loaves of bread and more cheese, both of which Sora recognized well (he had previously seen that bread being made in McDuck’s when he visited Ventus and he knew the cheese most likely came from a local farmer outside of Traverse Town). He sat with Repliku while he ate, the two quiet until Sora’s last bite.

“So I was ‘making a racket’ the other day, was I?” Sora questioned, side-eyeing Repliku as he stuffed the last bite of his breakfast into his mouth.

“Maybe it wasn’t a racket but you still woke me up with your cleaning. You couldn’t have at least waited until the sun rose? Riku already drives me enough like a slave, the least I could get is some decent sleep,” Repliku moaned in response.

“Oh, so it was just to get me in trouble with Wizard Riku, I see.”

“You could probably just call him Riku, he’s only a wizard when he does magic, which is usually just in the bathroom and when someone asks for something Lea can’t do, which nowadays isn’t very often.”

Sora thought about that for a moment before asking, “How long has Lea been here?”

“A couple years now, I think. He showed up not too long after Riku set up his spell shop in Twilight Town but anything else about it, you’d have to ask him yourself. He hasn’t shared too much with me and Riku, but that could also be because Riku is out a lot of the time. He was around enough to teach him enough magic to keep his shops going, at least.”

Sora mulled over what Repliku had told him, long enough that Lea joined the two of them for breakfast.

“Did Riku pick up more bread yesterday?” Sora asked after Lea had retrieved his own breakfast.

“No, I picked it up while I was in Traverse Town. Riku’s been chasing after someone in the Land of Departure, I think,” Lea mulled as he started eating. Upstairs, the sound of water rushing into the tub could be heard faintly.

“You were in Traverse Town?” Sora pried.

“Mm. I made some friends there recently, they work at McDuck’s. One of them, she’s one of the girls up front, her name is Xion. She’s pretty cool, got a sharp tongue. The other, he just started there recently as a baker’s apprentice, but his name’s Ven and he’s a good guy. A little dense and blunt sometimes, but he’s real cool. I went down there yesterday actually because I heard Riku talking about how he’s been pursuing a Ventus but it’s not my friend Ven, I asked him yesterday. So that’s good.”

Sora only had a moment to think about hearing that Lea had befriended his brother when a loud shout was heard from upstairs. They looked up the stairs from where they were seated, wondering what had happened when the bathroom door slammed open, a cloud of steam following Riku’s frantic figure as he ran down the stairs.

“What did you do?!” Riku shrieked, pieces of his hair in his hands as he stood before Sora, with only enough decency to wear a towel before coming down.

“What do you mean?” Sora asked, already seeing what Riku was upset about. The hair that had previously reached past his shoulders in length appeared to be breaking off at a length just past his ears. From what was in his hands, it looked like he had most likely been running his hands through his hair to wash it and came back with more than he bargained.

“What did you do to the spells in there?! What concoction did you make to make my hair fall out?!” Riku continued shouting and getting closer to Sora, causing him to rise from his chair and warily step back from him.

“I didn’t mix anything together while I was in there if that’s your concern. I just tidied everything up and lined them up so you could see what they were.”

“You mixed them up! Now they’re mixed in my hair and I’m going to be bald and hideous after this…” Riku collapsed onto the chair Sora had vacated, staring blankly ahead of him as the castle suddenly became dark and foreboding.

“Oh great,” Lea muttered from behind Sora.

“What now?” Sora looked back to him, exasperated at the situation.

“He’s calling up spirits of darkness. I’ve only seen him do this once before when he got dumped but I can’t do anything about them.”

“Really?!” frustration colored his words as Sora turned back to Riku, “You’re calling spirits of darkness or whatever because some of your hair falling out? That you think you’ll be left hideous and alone? I’ve never had your luxury and you’re going to throw a tantrum like a child over it? I’m over it!” Sora stomped out, turning the handle to the side that lets them out near the wastes.

The castle had been stopped by a field a distance away from any homes or roads with a lake in the near distance. It was raining as Sora huffed out, walking to the middle distance between the lake and the castle, far enough that the rain drowned out the wailing from the spirits in the castle. His breathing trembled as he tried to calm back down but tears of frustration rose to his eyes and quiet sobs escaped him.

Sora knew only minutes had past but the time in the rain felt like years before he managed to compose himself again. “I wasn’t even that upset that he was yelling at me, why am I crying about it,” he muttered to himself as he stood there, wiping the tears from his eyes. 

Sora realized in that moment that it wasn’t Riku crying over his hair that upset him. It wasn’t anything that had happened in the last few minutes that had set him off. It was from the moment that his mom had passed away, when Cloud had announced to him and his brothers that their lives had to change in order to keep anything their parents had built up. The loss of any control over what he could do, who he could interact with, who his friends were, what he did in the day, had knocked Sora so off kilter that now, 80 years older and miles away from any home he had ever known that seeing such a display from a moment of control lost for someone else hit the landmine of emotion that he pushed down to do what was right for his family and what he believed would end up being right for him in the end.

“Oh.” he muttered as he looked out across the lake and felt a piece of that weight lift off of him. He had left. He was doing something for himself, no matter how temporary it may be, but he chose to do it. He had more control of that back in his hands. 

As he was getting ready to turn back and help with whatever mess Riku was probably causing, he heard shouting from the door of the castle. “Sora! Riku’s melting!” Lea shouted out to him.

Sora sighed lightly as he walked back to find that Riku had started oozing some kind of goo while he had been outside. It wasn’t inky like the goo that pursued them before at the festival, but clear with a green hue to it and very much just some kind of slime he was using to express himself. Riku was still staring ahead but the goo carried away most of the hair that had broken off, leaving him with shorter hair but nothing like the baldness he had previously whined about.

“Come on, let’s get him washed up. He’ll be fine, he’s just throwing a tantrum,” Sora walked over to Riku, lifting him up under his armpits like he had done countless times with Roxas and Ven when they were little and fighting. He looped one of Riku’s arms around his neck and held him by the forearm before grabbing him around the waist, doing what he could with the slimy skin there.

“Go draw another bath for him, I’ll get him up there,” Sora instructed Lea. The gangly man maneuvered around the slime before running up the stairs. 

As he started dragging Riku along, he spoke, “You have nothing to say about this?”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Repliku shrug, “He’s a drama queen. If I was in danger, I would’ve let you and Lea know.”

Sora nodded, beginning the trek with Riku up the stairs to the bathroom. It wasn’t too difficult of a task baring when any grip he had on Riku from the towel was lost as it slipped off part way up the stairs, leaving Sora with a completely naked Riku for the final part of the trek up. As they reached the bathroom, he passed Riku off to Lea who was able to get a better grasp of him since he was taller and dragged him into the bathroom. Sora turned around to find a long trail of slime all the way up the stairs and whatever had pooled around him before they carted him upstairs.

Sora sighed, “Now I’ll have to mop again.”

* * *

After Sora mopped, he found that the last load of laundry he had done was not spared from the slime from Riku. Within the laundry sat the cloak that Riku frequently wore. It had become the unfortunate recipient of most of the slime that had oozed into the clothing. Where he was able to scrub out the other slime stains, the magnitude and amount of slime within this cloak left it permanently stained. 

With that thought, Sora decided he could probably make something useful out of what was salvageable from the cloak. Maybe an apron or a pillow. Having done some sewing, he knew he needed some smaller pieces to be able to stitch it together into whatever he wanted to make, so he took a pair of scissors he had previously found and began cutting the fabric into smaller pieces.

Lea came back downstairs some time after Sora had started his cutting, only saying, “I think he wore himself out and he’ll probably be asleep for a while.”

“That’s what happens when you put your whole body into your temper tantrum,” Sora responded, snickering as he continued cutting. The joke got Lea laughing too, leaving him hunched over what he was working on for a moment before he started on whatever spells he had to work on then.

By the end of the day, Sora had finished cutting out many small triangles from the cloak. He piled them up and then set about putting together some food for him and Lea to eat before bed. The two had become fairly good friends since Sora had come to stay, chatting frequently about what they were working on and their next steps. Sora didn’t say anything about the cloak though.

The next morning, Riku came down like nothing had happened the day before. His bangs were shorter, sitting out of his eyes now and the rest of his hair was shorter with the longest strands sitting at about chin length. He seemed brighter and more upbeat as he came down the stairs, walking over to the laundry pile.

“Hey Sora, you haven’t seen my jacket lately have you? The one with the pattern on it,” Riku asked, looking through the pile.

“Uh… Well, you see. Yesterday, when there was slime everywhere. Um… It may have ended up covered in said slime. I did what I could to get the stain out but there was just so much and it wasn’t coming out,” Sora rambled as Riku turned to look at him and saw the pile of fabric pieces along with what remained of the solid cloak on the ground near him.

Riku lifted the large piece and looked at the stain before locking eyes with Sora. He placed his hand over the worst of the stain and his hand began glowing. Like the first day Sora was there and Riku had erased the scorch mark from the table, he again removed any trace of what had been added to the jacket, leaving it clean and stain-free.

“Next time, instead of deciding to butcher my things, you could just ask for help with it,” Riku said, devoid of emotion. He walked back upstairs and was gone only briefly before he was back with a different, unpatterned suit jacket. “I would like that jacket fixed,” he said as he passed by, walking out the door onto the grass outside of the castle.

“Seems you upset him,” Repliku spoke up from his place in the fire pit.

“I’m still finding out what can and can’t be done with magic. I’ve never really been around magic until now so how was I supposed to know that I could ask one of you guys to magic away a stain in some clothes?” Sora pouted. Repliku didn’t have anything to say in response, so Sora went ahead and started working on fixing what he had done, digging through the pile of triangles to find the one that went in the first hole he found. He only had enough time to stitch one side of the first triangle back into place before Lea came stomping down the stairs.

“Did he leave?” Lea huffed, leaning over the railing to look between Sora and Repliku.

“Just a couple minutes ago. Doubt you’ll catch him though,” Repliku responded.

“Dammit, that stupid spell out back needs done and I can’t do it. The royal guards are picking it up in two days and that bastard keeps gallivanting off to do whatever he wants to,” Lea whined.

“Do you know where he’s going? We could try and catch up to him, see if we can drag him back.”

“Yeah, he’s in the Land of Departure, most likely. He doesn’t really have anywhere else to mess around right now since he’s pursuing someone out there now. I think he’s going after Master Aqua’s new apprentice.”

“Her new apprentice?!” Sora balked, “That’s my br- nephew. He’s really going after him?”

Lea hummed an affirmative.

“Then we should go get him! He’s got work to do and my nephew has his own learning to do.”

“Yeah alright. I guess being proactive will probably be in our best interest. Let me grab my coat and then we can go get him,” Lea hurried back up the stairs. Sora grabbed the walking stick he brought with him and met Lea at the top of the stairs that lead out of the castle.

“Alright, so we’re gonna use a darkness portal. It sounds worse than it is but it just uses the same energy that those spirits of darkness Riku summoned yesterday use. It’ll let us go wherever we need to go with no trouble at all, unless you wander off in the inbetween. Which is why we are going in together to prevent that from happening at all,” Lea explained as they walked down the stairs and out the front of the door. While Riku had probably only been gone ten minutes, there was no sign of him ever walking out the door.

“Is this how you get to Traverse Town so quickly?”

“Yeah, it’s a big time saver. Anyway, let’s go,” Lea held out his elbow for Sora to hold onto as he motioned with his left hand. A pool of dark swirling energy opened up on the ground in front of them before elongating upwards into a portal that the two of them could comfortably walk through.

As Lea had mentioned, the space between where they entered and the exit straight ahead was vast. If one were to get distracted and wander off to look at something, they would never find their way back to exit. While he was holding on to Lea to direct him where to go, Sora took the opportunity to look around the space. He could see creatures moving and slithering around in the distance but there was no appeal for him to go explore whatever it was himself. Before he could think any more on it, Lea pulled the two of them through the exit.

Sora had never been to the Land of Departure but Cloud and his mother knew of people who lived there. It was a beautiful place that sat atop high cliffs above a sharp drop to a dry grassland below. There was a waterfall that fed into a lake below the cliffs but much of the water was used for irrigation and water mills, so it contributed to the dry land below.

Roxas had sent a letter to him and Cloud shortly after he arrived in the Land of Departure, explaining that the large home of Master Aqua and her husband Terra sits closest to the cliffside, making looking out the windows beautiful but one side of the house very terrifying to be on.

Sora didn’t need to say any of this though, as Lea knew who Master Aqua was and knew which house was hers anyway. The two of them walked together, sneaking around the outside of the property to try and see if they could see Riku anywhere.

It didn’t take very long to find him. He and a blond man sat on a ledge near the edge of the property, talking quietly to each other. As Sora looked closer, his brow furrowed in confusion as he recognized his brother Ventus sat next to Riku rather than Roxas. He knew Lea had mentioned something about a Ventus before but seeing Ven in the Land of Departure left him reeling in confusion. Where was Roxas? Was he okay? Before he could wind himself up about his youngest brother though, a most handsome man approached Lea and Sora.

“Well Lea, what brings you out here? We are getting all kinds of guests today it seems,” he smiled at the two of them.

“Hi Terra, I was actually wondering if we could talk with Master Aqua for a moment? We’re here to collect Riku but my friend here,” Lea grabbed Sora’s shoulder, “says that your apprentice is his nephew, so I was wondering if he could ask how he’s doing.”

Terra nodded before turning and walking, motioning for the two of them to follow him. He led them into the house, which was just as much a spectacle inside as it was outside. He further led them to a sitting room of some kind before leaving them to fetch Master Aqua.

“He’s a nice guy. He’s trained in magic too but some of the pull towards dark magic can be hard to resist. He wasn’t able to become a master because of it so he limits what magic he does nowadays to not hurt anyone. He, his wife ,and Riku share a mentor so the three of them share a bond from that. I don’t know what it is about your nephew that’s drawing his attention though,” Lea filled the silence that was left. They waited only a moment longer before a slender woman with blue hair walked through the door Terra had previously walked out of.

“Oh Lea, it is so good to see you again, I hear you’ve been working hard lately. Who is your friend here?” the woman spoke. Master Aqua, Sora presumed.

“I am Roxas’s uncle. Well, I guess Ventus. I was wondering if you could explain that to me?” Sora asked.

“Sure. Roxas came and he was taking well to magic but a little bit before May Day, he asked if he could visit his brothers. I gave him the time to go but I found out when a young man using my own charms to disguise himself as Roxas arrived that the two had switched places. I told him to just cut the act and be who he really is. I’m not picky about which student I have and I would have been just as happy to have both of them but if Roxas had other dreams, then he is allowed to pursue them. Ventus is a hard worker though, and I can see he is doing very well here,” she told him. The answer soothed him some, leading him to believe the brother he met with on May Day was actually Roxas and not Ven but he wasn’t entirely sure.

He didn’t have long to think though as there was a loud ruckus outside, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. They all rose, Lea and Sora following Aqua out of the house to see a large mangy dog with ruddy fur caught in a bush next to the house. Terra beat the three of them outside and was working to free the dog from the bush while Riku and Ventus moved away from their ledge in case things got crazy to make sure neither of them fell.

After a moment, Terra managed to unhook the dog from where he was caught. The dog bolted as soon as he was free, barreling into Sora and Lea’s legs as it ran past them into the house.

“No, out of the house! Out of the house,” Aqua called after the dog, running after it as it ran further into the house. Terra and Ventus followed right behind them, Ventus not looking twice at Sora as he ran past him.

This left Sora, Lea, and Riku outside and looking in the direction of the door. Riku sighed before turning his gaze back to the two of them. “What brings you here, then? Come to cut up more of my clothes?”

“I actually brought him along because _you_ have some work that you need to do before you can run off again,” Lea interjected. “That spell for the king is being picked up in two days and you haven’t even started it.

“Oh blast it. Stupid thing anyway,” Riku muttered before turning and opening his own portal. “I guess we should head back since it seems we all have something that needs doing back at the castle.” Riku walked through the portal. It stayed open just long enough for Lea and Sora to follow behind him, leaving the Land of Departure behind them.

* * *

The rest of the day after the three of them returned from the Land of Departure was spent with Riku and Lea out in the backyard area of the castle. Based on how it was put together, it didn’t really make sense for there to be the space there that there was but Sora didn’t ask any questions about it. The castle was magically confusing enough as it was.

Sora spent this time continuing his new sewing project and chatting with Repliku periodically. Repliku told stories of what it’s like to be a fire demon and stories about Riku. Times Riku had been dumped and heartbroken over it and other times where he was cruel to whoever he was chasing and leaving them hanging while he did what he wanted to do. Sora in turn shared stories of his time in school and times with his brothers. He never said their names in case Repliku would tell someone or anyone else would overhear but he took advantage of being able to talk about his life before everything that had happened.

Riku and Lea would come through the room every so often, one or the other digging through spell components before returning with what they needed back outside. By the end of the day, the two slumped in chairs next to Repliku and Sora, whining about how they’ll need to carry it into the castle tomorrow and how much of a pain that will be for them.

“It’s just so bulky and heavy, there’s no way to reasonably get this inside,” Lea bemoaned.

“This is why the Royal Wizard is supposed to do these things,” Riku muttered back.

“Yeah, and I bet he would have if he wasn’t missing,” Lea shot back.

“Good point. I wonder if the messenger that he’ll send to pick up the spell will try to guilt me into going and searching for her again.”

“Pretty sure one of those letters that came for you the other day was asking that.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see if they follow up on it then.”

The two sat for a while longer before heading up the stairs, both of them quiet shortly after.

The following day had both Lea and Riku taking the day off, both of them saying they wanted to get out and not pick up or move the spell until absolutely necessary, leaving Sora alone in the castle with Repliku. He continued with his sewing project, the number of triangles feeling like they multiplied since when he cut them out. There seemed to be more and more triangles to have to try and piece back together every time he would dig to find the right one.

The castle was quiet for most of the morning, Repliku taking the opportunity to do nothing to do just that. Around noon, however, there came a knocking on the door.

“Wonder who that could be,” Sora muttered as he got up.

“Castle door,” Repliku said.

“Who would need to knock on the castle door? Maybe we’re stopped in a bad spot today.”

Sora walked down the stairs, straightening his shirt in case it was someone important there. He reached down and opened the door.

Instead of finding a person on the other side of the door, he found a stick figure with a dirty dress and a rotting smell coming from what used to be a bright yellow paopu fruit. With a jump, Sora moved to shut the door but the scarecrow he had previously helped out of a bush leapt forward, trying to jam itself into the doorway.

“Repliku! Repliku move the castle!” Sora shouted frantically. With a shift, Sora felt the castle lift back up off of its resting place and start moving.

This, however, did not stop the scarecrow. If anything, the scarecrow became more persistent, wriggling this way and that to try and get into the castle. Sora pushed against the door and whatever parts of the scarecrow he could reach but whenever he could get the scarecrow out of the door just enough to be able to close the door, it would hop back up and jam itself back into the opening.

“Faster Repliku!” Sora shouted again, tussling with the scarecrow still. With another shift, Sora could feel Repliku moving the castle faster and faster.

With a shove, Sora dislodged the scarecrow a final time. Before he shut the door, he watched as the scarecrow kept following the castle but was slowly becoming smaller and smaller as the castle sped further away from it. After a few more minutes of moving at this speed, the scarecrow disappeared from view. Sora said nothing but fell back onto the stairs, gripping his chest as his heart kept feeling like it did when he was initially scared by seeing the scarecrow.

“Is it okay to stop yet?” Repliku asked, his voice sounding labored from the work he was doing to move the castle.

“You can slow back down,” Sora replied, his voice just as labored. He sat on the stairs with the door open for a while longer before his chest no longer hurt and he could rise to close the door. Climbing up the stairs gave his chest another squeeze but he was able to reach where he had been sleeping and went to rest a while.

“What was that about?” Repliku asked as Sora was settling down.

“A scarecrow tried to climb into the castle. It gave me such a fright that I asked you to make the castle run away from it. It kept following though so I kept having you move the castle,” Sora explained, taking deep breaths as he calmed back down again.

“I don’t entirely understand but as long as you think you kept us safe then it’s fine.”

“I hope I did.”

Sora dozed off for a while afterwards, the excitement getting to him. He awoke when Lea came back, the young man complaining about how far away the castle was from when he left this morning. Repliku explained what Sora had told him and Lea didn’t ask for any further elaboration. He shrugged and placed whatever he had brought back with him on the table to be dealt with later.

A similar routine happened when Riku came back about an hour later, though this time Sora was up and relaxing by Repliku when he came in. After Repliku explained what Sora had told him to Riku, Riku looked at Sora with worry on his face.

“Are you alright? That scarecrow didn’t hurt you, did it?” Riku asked, his concern genuine.

“The scare messed with my heart for a while but I’m feeling better now. I’ll be alright,” Sora gave a small smile up at Riku with the hope of calming some of his nerves.

“I’ll see what I can do to try to help make sure nothing happens to your heart if something like that happens again. We can’t have our wonderful grandpa and cleaning service go down because a scarecrow is trying to break into the castle, can we?” Riku added a tone of teasing to the end but the sentiment was still clear that he was worried and genuinely wanted to help Sora.

“Thank you,” was all Sora could respond with as Riku lightly ran his fingers through Sora’s hair as he walked past him, leaving Sora with Repliku and his thoughts once again.

* * *

That following week, as Sora continued sewing the little triangles back into place on Riku’s ruined cloak, he watched Lea futz over a spell. Riku had given it to him before disappearing a few days before, telling him that it should be just challenging enough to get Lea working but not so hard that he was likely to fail or need help.

This, however, seemed to be an overestimation of Lea’s capabilities as a wizard. About two or three times a day, Sora would see Lea light up as he would grab a new ingredient he would mix into his concoction before deflating again as nothing would happen and he would sit back down next to the work bench and go back to thinking and mulling over the note in front of him.

On the fourth day, after the two had eaten dinner and the sun had dipped below the horizon, Lea pulled his chair next to Sora, knocking his pile of triangles over and sighing to him, “I can’t figure out this stupid spell.”

“What’s making it so hard? Doesn’t it just tell you what you need?” Sora asked, setting his project on top of the toppled cut-outs.

“Sometimes they’re that simple, like a recipe, but sometimes they’re like poems you have to interpret and figure out what each part of the spell is. I thought I knew what could get this spell going, but I,” he runs his fingers through his hair, “I just can’t.” He shoves the sheet at Sora, moving his hand from the top of his head to over one of his eyes, holding his head in that hand.

Sora read the poem quietly to himself -

Thinking of you wherever you are.

We pray for our sorrows to end

and hope our hearts will blend.

Now I will step forward and realize this wish.

And who knows,

starting a new journey may not be so hard

or maybe it has already begun.

There are many worlds

but they share the same sky.

One sky, one destiny.

“Well, for ‘our sorrows to end’, it’d have to be something that makes people happy, right?” Sora asked, voicing the first idea he had while reading.

“I tried that! I did sorrows, I used your tears and mine, I asked you for those a couple days ago,” Sora nodded, thinking back to frantic Lea pushing a small glass up under his eye to catch the tears he cried as he jabbed his sewing needle into a tender spot on his knee, “and then I added something that makes me happy for my tears, I used ashes because my favorite spells are the ones that light up and react with fire because they’re so cool, but when I did what I thought could be the rest of the spell, nothing happened, so I don’t think that was right. Then I used your tears and tried to think of what makes you happy, so I added some dirty soapy water since you got so excited when you cleaned the whole castle-” Sora rolled his eyes but didn’t interrupt, “but that didn’t work either, so I’m not sure what type of lead I should go down with that part.”

“You probably don’t need to add anything about sorrows, this is about them ending after all.”

“And it needs to be something universal since focusing on just yours or my own sorrows didn’t work.”

“What about flowers? Flowers can make anyone happy,” Sora said, a warm fluttering in his heart thinking back to his mother and her shop.

“Sure, we can try some flowers. Can you put the castle by some flowers, Repliku?”

Repliku hums in reply, not moving otherwise.

“But what about everything else in the spell? What does ‘one sky, one destiny’ even mean, anyway?”

“Something from the sky then? Since it connects everything, from what I understand anyway…” Sora hummed to himself while he and Lea sat in relative silence, the crackle from Repliku the only sound cutting through them.

After what felt like forever but was probably closer to 10 minutes, Lea abruptly stood up, shouting “I’ve got it!” before taking off and running out the door.

Sora got up as quickly as he could and followed behind Lea, making sure to grab his walking stick. He stepped out onto the lit streets of Twilight Town, the sun having fully descended beyond the horizon and the streets getting darker. He saw Lea running up to the train station, so he rushed behind him as quickly as his old legs would let him. He caught the tail end of Lea entering the station before losing sight of him again. As he entered, he saw Lea negotiating with the ticket employee and he headed over to him, overhearing part of their conversation.

“The next train to the beach leaves in 10 minutes, I can’t make it go any faster since we are waiting for the train to get back,” the employee sighed. “This is one of the last trains heading out there as well, so I’m not going to make other people who live out there get stuck here because I rushed the train along.”

Lea deflated some, passing enough munny for two tickets to the employee before moving to the platform and sitting on a bench with enough room for Sora to sit beside him.

“You want to explain what you have planned, young man?” Sora looked over at Lea, leaning on his walking stick and catching his breath.

“I think I know how to get a piece of the sky, but we have to go out to the beach to get it. At least somewhere with a lot of space.”

The two caught their breath and sat on the bench as patiently as they could. This was easier for Sora in this moment than it was for Lea, who bounced his legs the entire time the two waited for the train to pull up. Once they boarded, the ride was as quiet between the two, Sora thinking what Lea might mean by being able to get a piece of the sky.

As they got off the train, the world around them was dark, illuminated by only a few street lamps heading towards the port and the moon that had risen on the ride over. Lea ignored the pathway to the port, instead walking straight ahead through a field to the sandy beach ahead of them. As they walked, Sora could see the light from the lamps and the train stop fading away behind them and streaks across the sky came into view.

“I’ve never seen shooting stars before, there was a street lamp right outside the house I grew up in,” Sora said aloud, mostly to himself as Lea was a good distance away from him at this point.

Lea hit the beach before Sora did but he could already piece together what Lea was thinking. Out about waist deep for Lea in the water, one of the shooting stars landed, skittering along the water before fizzling out. Next to Sora, another star fell into the field before running off and fading away.

Lea walked back and forth on the beach, watching the shooting stars for one that would fall. As Sora reached the sandy beach, Lea ran off away from the port again, running after a star that was coming down. Sora pushed himself to run as fast as he could beside him, coming the closest he had to his speed before he was cursed. Lea came to a stop as the streak fell before him, landing squarely in his cupped hands. Sora was only a moment behind them when he could start hearing him talking to the star.

“You’re okay buddy, I got you,” Lea spoke, trying to comfort the star.

“I don’t wanna die. I wasn’t ready to come down, I don’t want to die,” the star said, the light haloing around Lea.

“You aren’t gonna die buddy, I’ve got you, I can keep you safe. I need you for something though,” Lea spoke as calmly as he could, excitement radiating off of him.

“No you can’t. I fell, that means I am here to die,” the light said, beginning to fade.

“Can I do anything to help you?” Lea asked, a frantic tone entering his voice as he saw the light fading.

“Not for me, not today,” the light whispered as it faded completely from Lea’s hands, leaving him standing on the shoreline, staring at his empty hands.

The water licked at Sora’s and Lea’s feet before Lea spoke again, “I think I’m going to ask Riku about this when he gets back.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Sora looked around Lea at his empty hands before tugging lightly on his arm to start heading back.

More stars shot around them with one falling and skittering away every once in a while, but the two make it back to the train stop in time for the last train, quiet until the two part ways in the castle and bid each other good night.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Enjoy the sneak peek of what's to come in the final art piece!


End file.
